Tag: skill

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The Priority Skill

Your “priority” is a skill

First, to strengthen our bias to prioritize, we must consider it a skill.

Skills get better the more we use them. The more I shoot a basketball, the better I get at it.

Things like coaching and a particular regiment help control my growth. These options create consistent growth in almost all skills.

The other thing that is consistent is the growth that comes after a challenge.

Back to “priorities.”

The biggest challenges we face with “priority” is prioritizing among the things that we like.

Being able to say no to working out is easy. Deciding to say no to a potential bonus at work or working on your personal project is much harder.

However, that is the difference between a minuscule increase and one that revs up your “priority” skill.

That often is the difference between mediocre and great work.

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Thank You, altMBA

The altMBA is powerful.

When I started writing this, that is the first thing I thought of, so I figured why not start with it? The program was a rousing success for me. I learned a ton of tactics that change the path of the projects I engage in. I learned how to ask better questions and how to give feedback.

There was one change that may have set my life in a different direction, and that is the idea of “direction” (no pun intended).

Before doing this program, I was a ball of energy with nowhere to go. I often sat, shaking, generating, but with no way to understanding of direction I missed making a real impact. I dismissed it.I made it a point to avoid direction at all cost because it felt wasteful. Even in my first post in the program, I dismissed goals.

Now, because of the work of altMBA, I have changed.

When I did the work, and saw how powerful asking the question “Who is this for?” was, and how much clarity that question had when it’s asked earnestly and with an open mind, it was shocking. This led me down a path of understanding someone’s world view. I’m now more particular about the transformation I want to make. Most importantly, I’m shipping more impactful work in a much shorter time.

Direction is a force multiplier, and with this new strategy regarding my work, I can’t wait to see what’s next.

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Checklists Mean More

I never knew something so simple, a routine checklist, could have profound results. The check lists I use have effected my habits. What was a random morning has now turned into a real routine. That routine has become positive. I can now start to time my mornings, something that had eluded me in the past. I enjoy the effect it has had on my life, and being consistent with some of the things on those checklists allow me to feel and be better.

As much as I love checklists, the idea of that consistency taught me something else. I have learned that your understanding will grow with anything if you use it consistently. I have noticed with each week I use my checklists, small improvements appear. Nothing huge, but simple things like batching certain tasks, using time, what theme that they belong in, and using different colors all change my mood hand help me get things done. It feels mundane, but the checklists I started with look vastly different from the ones I use now. The ones I use in the future will look more different still.

When I looked at them from afar, check lists were static tools. They were the same thing, day after day, boring anyone who dare viewed them. Now I see the idea itself is a skill, to learn how to show the things that are happening in life, codify them, and distill them into a list of things that matter. If you keep working at it, this skill will improve. Like many things in life, the idea of the checklist is simple, but the concept itself can bear many gifts if you are open to receiving them.

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